Elizabeth Warren Puts An End To Jeff Session’s Interference

Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s seemingly fraught history with now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions is no secret.

“I opposed Sessions for being Attorney General of the United States. And you may remember I got sent away from the Senate for that and got shut down and not allowed to speak again until after the vote,” the
Massachusetts senator recalled to David Axelrod on “The Axe Files,” a podcast from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN.

“That was the rule. I could not speak again until the Senate had had a chance to vote on Jeff Sessions,” Warren said of the incident, in which she was accused of impugning a fellow senator and barred from speaking throughout the rest of the debate on his nomination.
Now one day ahead of Sessions’ testimony before the Senate intelligence committee, Warren voiced strong thoughts about her former colleague.
“He needs to be fired. He needs to be taken out of that job,” she said. “If you’re not going to be honest during your confirmation hearing, then you ought to be gone.”
Sessions recused himself from the Justice Department’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election in early March, after it came to light that he had not disclosed two pre-election meetings with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak during his confirmation hearings. According to sources familiar with the closed briefing, former FBI director James Comey said Sessions may have met with Kislyak a third time.
In a statement Thursday night, the Justice Department asserted that the only reason Sessions recused himself was because of his participation in the Trump campaign.
Tuesday’s hearing will be the first time Sessions has testified in Congress since that recusal and Comey’s ouster. Warren said she is looking forward to finding out more about Sessions’ role in Comey’s firing, although the White House suggested Sessions could invoke executive privilege during his testimony depending on “the scope of the questions.”
Warren emphatically believes that Sessions’ involvement in Comey’s dismissal would be a violation of his recusal.
“Yes, yes, yes,” she said when Axelrod asked about the matter.